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Nature Physics 4, 507 (1 July 2008) | doi:10.1038/nphys1010

The law of accelerating returns

Mark Buchanan

The American technologist Ray Kurzweil is also known as a 'futurist', and he has a certain talent for predicting technological trends. Twenty years ago, for example, Kurzweil predicted that, sometime in the early 21st century, hand-held devices would enable blind people to read.